OpenAI takes stake in Thrive Holdings in latest enterprise AI push

By Kritika Lamba and Krystal Hu Dec 1 (Reuters) – ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has taken a stake in Thrive Holdings as part of a partnership to embed artificial intelligence into traditional industries such as accounting and IT services, the companies said on Monday. OpenAI will work with Thrive's industry specialists to integrate its technology into business processes that remain largely manual and fragmented. As part of the non-monetary deal, OpenAI will provide a dedicated research team and resources in return for an ownership interest in Thrive Holdings. The move deepens the interweaving financial and business ties between OpenAI and Thrive Capital, one of its largest financial backers, which has invested several billion dollars into the AI lab. OpenAI has been trying to build on the success of ChatGPT to access more enterprises amid recent concerns about overpromising AI adoptions.  Thrive Holdings is a vehicle created by Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital to focus on buying traditional businesses in an AI-roll up play. Founded this year, the firm has raised over $1 billion to acquire service providers across the country, such as accounting and IT firms, aiming to overhaul their operations using AI to boost efficiency. Anuj Mehndiratta, partner at Thrive Capital who oversees Thrive Holdings, said the deal was necessary after it ran into "research problems much sooner" while deploying AI models. The firm found that "off-the-shelf" solutions were insufficient for complex, domain-specific tasks in its portfolio companies.  The collaboration will focus on AI application in professional services, particularly through reinforcement learning. This research technique uses feedback from domain experts to continuously train and improve the AI models for highly specialized functions. Thrive Holdings will own the intellectual property and products created through the joint effort. OpenAI, in addition to its equity, gains insights from seeing its models tested and refined in real-world enterprise environments, which can inform its broader research, according to Mehndiratta.  "We believe that aligning OpenAI through ownership is a similarly very powerful thing, where we can all kind of focus on the North Star of how do we go and build the leading products," he said in an interview.  Despite being a major investor in OpenAI, Mehndiratta said the partnership doesn't exclude Thrive using other AI models, including open source ones in its business where it makes sense. Thrive Holdings says it currently serves over 10,000 customers across its accounting and IT services platforms.  (Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in San Francisco; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Lincoln Feast.)

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